Economic Development Week is the right moment to name what is happening in our field and why those of us who champion entrepreneurship-led economic development need to speak up even more.
Economic development is changing.
IEDC’s new Dimensions of Economic Development Practice report gives us more than a snapshot. It gives us a measurable, fieldwide signal that the profession is moving beyond a narrow definition of growth. For the first time, Ecosystem Building and Entrepreneurship are named among the five core dimensions of economic development!
That matters.
For years, many of us have argued that economic development is not only about business attraction, investment, and job creation. It is also about building the conditions where people, entrepreneurs, communities, and systems can thrive.
This report validates that shift, and now during Economic Development Week, that validation feels especially important.
This is the week when we celebrate the practitioners who help communities compete, grow, adapt, and believe in their own future. It is also the week when we should be honest about where the work is going.
The future of economic development is more connected, more community centered, more entrepreneurial, and more systems oriented.
One of the most encouraging findings in the report is the generational handoff happening inside the profession. Newer practitioners are entering the field with a strong emphasis on community well being, systems thinking, equity fluency, and digital literacy.
That is not a side note, this is the future walking through the front door.
These practitioners are hungry for entrepreneurship-led economic development, now we just have to make sure to feed them. They are ready to build ecosystems, strengthen networks, support entrepreneurs, and help communities create prosperity from within.
That means bringing the best of what we have to the table, including the Entrepreneurship Development Professional certification, IEDC’s professional development opportunities, and the field tested tools, frameworks, and relationships that help practitioners turn belief into practice.
I do have one disagreement with the report, and would love to hear from others on this.
Job creation is placed under Traditional Economic Growth. I do not understand this choice. I argue that job creation belongs inside the fourth dimension, Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Entrepreneurs create jobs. Startups create jobs. Local businesses create jobs. Innovation driven companies create jobs. Main Street businesses create jobs. When we place job creation only in the traditional frame, we risk undercounting one of the most powerful engines of community-based growth.
That shift would have made the argument even stronger.
Still, this report is an important marker.
It is quantified. It is meaningful. It tells us that the field is not just changing in theory. It is changing in practice.
Economic Development Week should not only be a celebration of what economic developers do.
It should be a call to prepare for what economic development is becoming.
We are moving in the right direction, and SourceLink affiliates have been leading this change. We all have much to celebrate this Economic Development Week.
